6.3 The 1983 General Election defeat
6.4.2 Blatant Electoralism, 1987-1992
6.4.2.2 Programmatic changes, 1987-1992: the Policy Review
The most radical turnover in strategy between the 1983-1987 and 1987-1992 periods oc- curred in the field of programme. Before 1987, the party’s attachment to its democratic socialist ideas seems to have prevailed and little attempts to broaden its profile were made. After 1987, it appears that the party was confronted with an electoral reality that made this untenable. As shall be argued in more detail below, the Policy Review process that dominated the programmatic efforts from 1987 onwards appears to have been particularly motivated by electoral expediency. In addressing its electoral liabilities, the party adopted not merely a broader profile, but was brought to shift various ideological boundaries as well, particularly on the acceptance of the free market.
The Policy Review was launched in 1987, soon after the general election. Having noted the tenacity with which the party stuck to its principles in the previous electoral cycle, it was rather surprising to find a large number of papers relating the work of the Review to the need for broadly appealing policies. Moving Ahead, with its reference to winning over
those who had never voted for the party and the need to win in the South, was described as one of the review’s points of reference by the General Secretary, Larry Whitty.123 Similar
statements are found in a statement by Kinnock to the PLP on the subject,124 while
the need to win in the South and/or "more prosperous areas" is referenced in the PLP records a number of times in the context of PLP discussions on the Policy Review.125The
listening exercise with which the Review was to kick off also focused especially on areas where the party was weak, again mentioning the South as well as the Midlands.126
All this suggests an electoral motivation to the Policy Review. The essentially pragmatic backcloth of this wholesale policy overhaul becomes evident even further when studying its practice. The Policy Review Groups (PRGs) of the NEC and the Shadow Cabinet charged with the Review were presented with a polling report entitledLabour and Britain in the 1990s at the start in 1987.127 The Britain in the World group also received a
122. Labour, TULRG, “Trade Unions and the Labour Party,” 5-7.
123. L. Whitty, “Policy Review and ’Labour Listens’: Note by the General Secretary” (1987), KNNK 2/2/1, the Papers of Neil Kinnock (KNNK), Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, 2.
124. Kinnock, “Neil Kinnock Address to PLP,” 2; 4; Labour, PLP, “Minutes of the Party Meeting Held on Wednesday 4th November 1987 at 11.30 AM in Committee Room 14,” 1.
125. For instance: Labour Party, Parliamentary Labour Party, “Proceedings of the Party Meeting Held on Wednesday 6 July 1988 at 11.30 AM in Committee Room 14” (1988), Parliamentary Labour Party Archives, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester; Labour Party, Parliamentary Labour Party, “Minutes of the Party Meeting Held on Wednesday 17 June 1987 at 12.00 Noon in Committee Room 14” (1987), Parliamentary Labour Party Archives, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester.
126. Labour Party, “An approach to policy-making” (1987), KNNK 2/2/1, the Papers of Neil Kinnock (KNNK), Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, 5.
report on specific attitudes to international issues which singled out defence policy as a “significant” factor for desertion of voters.128 The terms of reference for this particular
PRG also strikingly pose the electoral impact of the choices made as to Britain’s role in the world as the first question to discuss during a preliminary discussion on values.129
This PRG would later, after much discussion, rid the party of its unilateralist policy.130
Before any policy reports were authored, the boundaries of the party’s ideological dis- course were already being shifted. Kinnock and his deputy, Roy Hattersley, produced the first-ever formulation of the Labour Party’s principles outside of the Constitution,
Democratic Socialist Aims and Values, to serve as a foundation for the Policy Review.131
The document notably contends that “. . . the true purpose of socialism is (. . . ) a gen- uinely free society, in which the fundamental objective of government is the protection and extension of individual liberty.”132 Moving Ahead already took an advance on this
earlier, and in a July note on policy development the Policy Director had also made a similar statement, but it does remain a remarkable departure from the usual collectivist understanding of the ideology.133 This is especially notable when seen in conjunction to
the youth and women communications reports of 1985, which had argued that this indi- vidualism was an area in which Thatcherism usually beat Labour.134
Comparison with alternative versions proposed to the NEC by left-wingers such as Tony Benn and David Blunkett and Bernard Crick is informative here. In the former, individualism is absent in favour of anti-capitalism and solidarity.135 In the latter, it is
enshrined in the French Revolutionary tripartite “liberty, equality, fraternity” as a framing device.136Aims and Values stands out by making enhancing individual liberty the sole aim
of democratic socialism, showing the influence of the spirit of the times on the thinking of the soft left-right leadership tandem.137
This has been some time coming – in fact, the theme of a more individualist presen- tation of socialist values already occurs in a 1983 memo outlining Kinnock’s strategy for
Britain in the World and Economic Efficiency PRG papers, Papers on the Policy Review, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester.
128. R. Osborn, “Britain in the World Policy Review Group: Quantitative Polling on These Topics” (1987), PD(I):2104/December 1987, Papers of the Britain in the World Policy Review Group, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester, 9.
129. Labour Party, Policy Directorate, “Policy Review Group Britain in the World, 10 January 1988 - Discussion on Values and Principles” (1988), PD(I):1247:Jan88, Papers of the Britain in the World Policy Review Group, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester, 2.
130. Labour Party, “Meet the Challenge, Make the Change: A New Agenda for Britain: Final Report of Labour’s Policy Review for the 1990s” (1989), Papers on the Policy Review, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester.
131. Kinnock and Hattersley, “Democratic Socialist Aims and Values.” 132. Ibid., 3.
133. Labour Party, Policy Directorate, “Policy Development for the 1990’s: A Preliminary Note from the Policy Director” (1987), KNNK 2/2/1, the Papers of Neil Kinnock (KNNK), Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, 2.
134. Labour, “Report on a Communications Strategy for Female Voters”; Labour, “Report on a Commu- nications Strategy for Young Voters.”
135. T. Benn, “The Aims and Objectives of the Labour Party: A Note by Tony Benn” (1988), KNNK 2/2/1, the Papers of Neil Kinnock (KNNK), Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.
136. D. Blunkett and B. Crick, “The Labour Party’s Values and Aims: an Unofficial Statement” (1988), Parliamentary Labour Party Archive, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester.
the leadership election that year.138 This memo also contains some of the lines of thought
that would later be prominent in the policy review, among others its change in attitude to large-scale nationalisation, a shift in attitudes to statism away from top-heavy state con- trol and its attention to ecological concerns.139 The line of thinking was further confirmed
by the above-mentioned 1985 round of communications research with an eye to develop- ing a strategy for young and female voters, which found that Thatcherism had changed voter’s attitudes to be more individualistic, entrepreneurial and more hostile to left-wing extremism in particular.140 The report on women, an important target constituency to
Labour also mentioned in Moving Ahead, recommended a communications strategy to
“play down ideological heritage”.141
Building onAims and Values, the Policy Review’s reports endorsed the market principle
for the allocations of “most goods and services”, rejected old-style nationalisation as the only form of public ownership and put special focus on the Environment with an entire section on quality-of-life issues, among others.142This rapid change in policy direction was
aided by the total sidelining of the Conference by a NEC-Shadow Cabinet tandem (the Policy Review Groups were officially working groups of the two bodies and their reports were made non-amendable).
The change is especially notable in the most controversial policy area of the decade, being nuclear disarmament. As already mentioned above, evidence to the PRGs as well as opinion in the PLP seems to be that it was a potential liability, far from the dogged adherence to it in the 1983-1987 electoral cycle. It is no surprise, therefore, that the Policy Review abandoned it in favour of a multilateral nuclear disarmament policy, helped along by international developments, although the issue was still left open in the first report.143
And while employment and public services still figure in Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, the final report of the Policy Review, the report chooses to focus on education
and training in employment more than on job creation, and takes a consumer perspective to public services.144
In effect, it seems that the reports constitute an attempt by the Labour Party to regain its economic credibility by redirecting and broadening its policies. The acceptance of the market mechanism and the concept of the state as a means instead of an end, referred to as the enabling state by Shaw,145 was central to this extension strategy. In addition, the
efforts to extend into new politics issues, which were also present in memos from before Kinnock’s leadership, were seen as being of particular importance to winning in the South,
138. Labour, Leader’s Office, “Memo to Neil Kinnock on Leadership Campaign Themes,” 2. 139. Ibid., 2-3.
140. Labour, “Report on a Communications Strategy for Female Voters”; Labour, “Report on a Commu- nications Strategy for Young Voters.”
141. Labour, “Report on a Communications Strategy for Female Voters.”
142. Kinnock and Hattersley, “Democratic Socialist Aims and Values,” 10; Labour, “Meet the Challenge, Make the Change,” 5; Labour Party, “Social Justice and Economic Efficiency: First Report of Labour’s Policy Review for the 1990’s” (1988), Papers on the Policy Review, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester, 5.
143. Labour, “Meet the Challenge, Make the Change,” 86-87; Labour, “Social Justice and Economic Efficiency,” 48.
144. Labour, “Meet the Challenge, Make the Change,” 6-7. 145. Shaw,The Labour Party Since 1979, 92.
as evidenced by a memo from the Environment spokesman to the Shadow Cabinet which also seems to have been inspired by good electoral performance by the minor Green party.146 The clear electoralist backcloth of the overhaul seems to further underscore the
general extension strategy, swinging Labour back well beyond the traditional pragmatism of the old right. The evidence linking the Policy Review to the 1987 defeat, but also to documents in the previous cycle, further strengthens the evidence that the electoral system and the constraints it imposed upon Labour played a large role in the radical change of direction the Policy Review represented.